There are a variety of weed extracting devices in the prior art that use various types of mechanisms to extract weeds with the goal of pulling the roots out of the ground intact. Some of these prior art devices serve to cut the underground roots of the weed to facilitate removal thereof. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,634 Mueller et al. on Dec. 29, 1987 discloses such a device. However, by leaving the roots in the ground, such devices do not prevent the weed from regenerating and, indeed, by a larger number. As such, devices that simply pull the weed until it is separated from its roots, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,154,465 Pakosh on Oct. 13, 1992, and devices that cut the roots while underground, are not ultimately helpful in the fight against unwanted growth of weeds.
Other devices aim to remove the whole weed, roots and stem, from the ground intact. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,165 Nelson et al. on Jun. 16, 1987, discloses a device that pulls the weed out of the ground by gripping a large portion of both the stem and roots simultaneously. The Nelson et al. device also has the advantage of using leverage to clamp down upon the weed and simultaneously remove the weed from the ground, which is otherwise unique in the prior art. Thus even someone without a relatively large amount of strength is able to effectively weed with such a device.
This device, however, relies on the user manually pushing prongs of the device into the ground by hand force on the handle. Many people find this difficult to do, particularly with dry soil and particularly those who are relatively light weight. Using the foot to push the probe into the ground is much more effective and comfortable, and several prior art devices have foot steps or the like just for this purpose. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,866 Atcheson on Aug. 4, 1981, as an example of a weed pulling device having a foot step. It would be difficult to find a place to mount a foot-step onto the Nelson et al. device, since much of its mechanism is precisely where one's foot would need to rest to force the prongs of such a device into the ground.
Therefore, there is clearly a need for a weed extraction device that is easy for even people who are relatively weak or light-weight to use for extended periods of time. Such a needed device would have a weed clamping mechanism based on leverage and would be inserted into the ground by force applied to a foot step to facilitate deep penetration of the prongs into even very dry soil. Such a needed device would be easy to manufacture, transport, and store, and would be effective at pulling weeds out with their roots intact. The present invention accomplishes these objectives.